Affiliation: GEI Partners, Principal
Email: steve@geipartners.com

Biography

Dr. Steven B. Wolff is a principal at GEI Partners, a consulting firm that helps organizations improve collaboration and team effectiveness by building Group Emotional Intelligence.  Prior to GEI Partners Steve worked at HayGroup where he conducted research and analysis related to leadership, organizational effectiveness, emotional intelligence, and organizational climate.

Steve’s background combines practitioner, academic, and technical experience.  He has over ten years experience teaching organizational behavior, leadership, managing teams, and human resource courses and over 15 years of experience in the high-tech industry as an engineer and manager. Steven, along with his colleague Vanessa Druskat, has developed a theory of group emotional intelligence that extends the theory of individual emotional intelligence to the group level.  His research has demonstrated the important role that group emotional intelligence plays in the effectiveness of high-performing teams.  In addition to his work on group emotional intelligence he has conducted research in the areas of team effectiveness; managing performance in self-managed teams; team leadership; organizational leadership; C-Suite competencies; peer feedback; organizational learning; and partnerships between business and public schools.  Steve also has extensive experience and expertise in survey design and psychometric analysis.

Steven holds degrees in electrical engineering from Stevens Institute of Technology and Northeastern University, an MBA from Babson College, and a DBA in organizational behavior from Boston University. 

Wolff, S. B. and Wohlberg, J. (2001). OB in Action: Cases and Exercises (6th edition). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Wohlberg, J., Gilmore, G. and Wolff, S. B. (1998). OB in Action: Cases and Exercises (5th edition). Boston: Houghton-Mifflin.

Wolff, S. B. and McDonald, B. (1995). Challenges in Management: Tool Kit Watertown, MA: MOR Associates.

Druskat, V. U. & Wolff, S. B. (2001). Building the emotional intelligence of groups.  Harvard Business Review,79(3), 81-90.

Druskat, V. U., Batista, J. M. F., & Wolff, S. B. “Catching” team-level emotional competence. Presented at the Annual Conference of the Society of Industrial and Organizational Psychology, Honolulu, May 2014.

Zhu, Guorong, Wolff, Steven B., Hall, Douglas T., Las Heras, Mireia, Gutierrez, Betzaluz & Kram, Kathy (2013). Too much or too little? A study of the impact of career complexity on executive adaptability. Career Development International 18(5), 457-483.

Wolff, S. B., Wageman, R., & Fontaine, M., (2009).  The coming leadership crisis:  An exploration of competencies that will be in short supply. International Journal of Human Resource Development and Management, 9(2/3), 250-274.

Koman, E. S., Wolff, S. B., (2008). Emotional intelligence competencies in the team and team leader: A multi-level examination of the impact of emotional intelligence on team performance. Journal of Management Development, 27(1), 55-75.

Wolff, S. B., Pescosolido, A. T., & Druskat, V. U. (2002). Emotional intelligence as the basis of leadership emergence in self-managing teams. Leadership Quarterly, 13, 505-522.

Druskat, V. U., & Wolff, S. B. (1999). Developmental peer appraisals in self-managing work groups. The Journal of Applied Psychology, 84(1), 58-74.

Druskat, V. U., & Wolff, S. B. (1999). The link between emotions and team effectiveness: How teams engage members and build effective task processes. In S. J. Havlovic (Ed.) Academy of Management Best Papers Proceedings.

Wolff, S. B., & Leader, G. C. (1993).  Business and the Public Schools: The Potential for a Partnership Based on Total Quality Management. Paper prepared for Human Resources Policy Institute, Boston University.

Wolff, S.B. (2014).  Emotion and mindfulness: Using emotion as Information to raise collective performance.  In N.M. Ashkanasy, W.J. Zerbe, & C.E.J. Hartel (eds.) Research on Emotion in Organizations, Volume 10, 367-395.

Druskat, V. U., & Wolff, S. B. (2008). Group-level emotional intelligence.  In N.M. Ashkanasy & C.L. Cooper (Eds.), Research companion to emotion in organizations (pp. 441-454).  London: Edward Elgar.

Koman, E. S., Wolff, S. B., Howard, A. (2008). The Cascading Impact of Culture:  Group Emotional Competence (GEC) as a Cultural Resource.  In Robert Emmerling, Vinod Shanwal, and Manas Mandal (eds.) Emotional Intelligence: Theoretical and Cultural Perspectives. San Francisco: Nova Science Publishers.

Druskat, V. U. & Wolff, S. B. (2006). The effect of confronting members who break norms on team effectiveness.  In L. Thompson, and K. Behfar (Eds.) Conflict in organizational teams. Evanston, IL: Northwestern University Press.

Wolff, S. B., Druskat, V. U., Koman, E. S. & Messer, T. E., (2006).  The link between group emotional comeptence and group effectiveness.  In V. U. Druskat, F. Sala, and G. Mount (Eds.), Linking emotional intelligence and performance at work:  Current research evidence with individuals and groups.  Mahway, NJ:  LEA.

Druskat, V. U., & Wolff, S. B. (2001). Group emotional competence and its influence on group effectiveness.  In Cary Cherniss and Daniel Goleman (Eds.), The emotionally intelligent workplace (pp. 132-155). San Francisco: Jossey-Bass.